Smirnoff Half Day Off

Background

New Zealand Wines & Spirits (NZWS) wanted to build on its successful first Smirnoff Half Day Off experiential promotion in 2001. Agency Wow Rapp Collins recommended a slight change to the communications mix to keep up with the target market’s continuing shift to SMS communication. However, there was still the same underlying need to continue building brand interaction with the key 18-24 year old market.

WRC’s approach was based on a two-tier programme to the consumer offering both on-premise (in bar) and off-premise (liquor store) incentives. Timing for HDO 2002 was set for Friday 6 December with a six-week integrated campaign leading up to the day.

Objectives

• Improve Smirnoff brand health measures
  in this key target group
• Increase Smirnoff market share and on-premise
  sales volumes
• Provide consumers with a unique
  Smirnoff brand experience

Target Audience
All consumers aged 18-24 years.

Channels

A wide mix of targeted media was used
to build awareness and participation.

• Email
• Internet
• TV
• Radio
• Outdoor
• Off-premise POS and product tags
• SMS text messaging
• Direct mail (for prize fulfillment)

Approach

• TV, radio, outdoor, internet, email andSMS were used to lead the campaign anddrive traffic to www.halfdayoff.co.nz to register for a $25 Smirnoff bar tab for theHalf Day Off
• Every week for five weeks in the leadup to the day 1000 winners were drawn and listed on the website
• T hese winners then received a DM pack containing their $25 Smirnoff Half Day Off bar tab
• Bar tabs were only redeemable on the Official Half Day Off, only in Official Half Day Off bars and only for Smirnoff
  drinks
• A separate SMS promotion was used through the off-premise channel with necktags on Smirnoff bottles, where purchasers could text in a unique number from their necktag to go in the draw for one of 150 Smirnoff party packs
• Both SMS winners and non-winners were also directed to the promotional website www.halfdayoff.co.nz

How Touchpoint Technology Helped

HDO 2002 further developed the previous year’s strong focus on technology to enable:

• Faster, easy and relevant communication with the target 18-24 years group
• Rapid build of a consumer and prospect database for ongoing marketing
• More cost-efficient use of the communications media budget

Results

While results are commercially sensitive, the partners can say that HDO 2002 outperformed all key business objectives across brand health measures, market share and on-premise volumes.

In addition, all response and involvement measures were up on the previous year across necktag promo entries, HDO 2002 web registrations, voucher redemptions, bar registrations and unique site visitors.

In short – it went off.